


A Short Study In Efficiency

by theshizniiit



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Amputation, Canon Disabled Character, Character Study, Child Neglect, Disabled Character of Color, Gore, Loneliness, Orphanage, Prosthesis, Wheelchairs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-19
Updated: 2015-04-19
Packaged: 2018-03-24 16:29:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3775519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theshizniiit/pseuds/theshizniiit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's not sure when she stopped being Amelie and started being Gazelle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Short Study In Efficiency

She doesn't talk about how she lost her legs.

It's not important. What's important is how she uses the ones she has now.

She's aware she's been upgraded, the sharp, lightweight metal is _far_ superior to flesh and bone, but sometimes, when she's alone in her suite in the mansion she and Valentine share, she feels a slight pull of an emotion she thought she'd forgotten.

She rolls over in her queen bed, and tries not to think about it.

It works for the most part because _god_ , she's unstoppable now. She's trained and trained and worked and molded herself into a weapon.

Gazelle is aware of the irony. An incomplete human being being quicker, deadlier, more athletic and efficient than those that have their bodies whole and undamaged all their lives.

But she's _not_ damaged. She's quick and clean and precise. Graceful. Statuesque. Beautiful.

She finds _her_ legs a lot nicer to look at too.

~

Gazelle doesn't think about Amelie.

The young girl who lost her legs in a mess of blood, jagged white bone and torn muscle hanging from her calves as she screamed.

The girl who was thrown into an orphanage in Algeria, who gathered parts over the course of the years she'd been there to build her own prosthetic legs long before Valentine came along and improved them. She doesn't think about the little girl in the wheelchair who learned to fight for her right to take up space in a place where other children were fighting to be seen also. She doesn't think about the fact that there often wasn't enough food, and even if there was, a disabled girl in a rickety old wheelchair couldn't get to it before the other children ran up on their undamaged legs and took all of it, leaving her slowly struggling to wheel to the kitchen to finally take what was left. It was never much. She was always behind, wheeling after everyone in that rusty chair.

She was slow, and weighed down.

A nightmare she lived in every day. She despised it.

She doesn't think about staying awake for hours while the other children slept, fastening the two knives that she stole from the kitchen when the cooks weren't looking onto the prototypes of her legs until her hands bled. Until one night when she finished with a sigh of relief, pride and accomplishment and slipped them on with shaking hands, silently praying to whoever or whatever was listening that they'd work, tightening the straps and standing up slowly with an awed breath, taking her first unsteady steps since she'd been broken. 

And they'd  _worked_. She'd done it. All on her own. 

The small girl laughed lightly, disbelief making her giggle shallow and breathy as she took another few steps slowly around the room. The moonlight shone through the window and she found herself _whole._ And she'd done it all on her own.

It was a cold night, but she didn't care. Didn't care at all. She looked back at the wheelchair, old, rusty and falling apart, like she had been and she walked for hours, just savoring the feeling of the muscles in the her thighs and what was left of the ones in her calves. She'd slipped outside and ran and walked for hours, a smile on her lips.

She was beautiful again.

She would later learn that she always was.

~

She met Valentine and he applauded her on her makeshift legs before asking if he can have the honor of improving them. She removes the blade from the smiling man's neck, gives him back his wallet with a smirk, and accepts his offer.

Amelie ends up going to work for the man in the baseball cap that she tried to pickpocket on the streets of Algeria.

He calls her Gazelle, and not a day after their meeting, gives her a job, a suite in his comically large home, and a pair of legs so sharp and so shiny, she vows to be by his side for as long as she's able. The man is eccentric, talks with a lisp, vomits at the smallest hint of blood or violence, and yet manages to be the most dastardly mind she's ever met. A genius.

He knows she's a genius too. He tells her so. He never underestimates her and always lets her in on his plans. They're thick as thieves.

He trusts her.

He knows what she's capable of. She'd never blinked at death. And she's troubled even _less_ at the prospect of taking a life. It's all a means to an end.

Necessary.

She possesses such dexterity, skill and strength that she might as well put it good use somehow. She's seen death over and over at the orphanage, and is nonchalant and indifferent in the face of it, her eyes cold and unfeeling. Why care? What did these people mean to her? What are their lives worth in the grand scheme of an amazing plan?

Not enough to spare them or even bat an eyelash at, she decides.

So she trains and then fights. And she wins. She uses her legs as an advantage, and she takes her power back, and then some.

She's deadly.

She's valuable.

~

So Gazelle walks on rods of shining metal. Her head high and her eyes piercing. 

She glides, she leaps, and takes off men's heads, never a falter in her step.

She never falters, why would she? Why would she stumble?

She walks on _air_.

**Author's Note:**

> I just really, really love Gazelle and aim to write so many ficlets about her character omg.  
> Feel free to prompt me at 808s-and-disco-face.tumblr.com


End file.
